6-11-08, 9:06 am

We can continue to believe our politicians as they echo messages of stability and order around our planet, and we can continue to feed off the BBC or the New York Times to get an insight into the normality of the global situation, but sooner or later, the collapse of our economies is going to affect us directly by hitting our pockets, and then perhaps we will be ready to act. Hopefully, against those politicians and global capitalists who are infecting our daily life by bringing a painful and miserable reality to the majority of humanity.

Yesterday, as I drove on the motorway towards Barcelona, I was overcome with tears. Lining the roads were truckers slowing the traffic, waving banners and making noise to be heard in order to be understood, while the rest of the drivers in their cars were feeling annoyed at the inconvenience of a minority obstructing their daily routine. The radio was repeating negative messages about the truckers, the politicians were repeating over and over again that these people were a minority, and that the rest of us should not worry, because they would not achieve the goal of disrupting the flow of petrol or the arrival of goods from one point to another.

As this was happening in Spain, discontented truckers in different points of the planet were also complaining. Their complain was a simple one: “We can no longer afford to feed our families.” Yet, solidarity is running so short these days, that isolated groups get affected by the global economic situation, while the rest of us continue our routine without paying much attention to their pleas. What people are failing to see, is the connection between the truckers today, the fishermen a few weeks ago, the homeowners losing their homes, and the global revolts because of rising food prices. The people being affected directly are giving us a warning of things to come, and the only way this can be reversed, is if we group together and begin to show support to those who are feeling the pain right now.

We have not been smart enough as a collective of global citizens to understand that we are being taken on a ride, that affected groups are being kept isolated by the magic wand of the mainstream media regurgitating the propagandistic message of the ruling elite. Everyday, the global situation is getting worse. As strikes are on the rise and unemployment is increasing, we must be alert, we must understand what is happening. The elites will continue to keep us divided, because divided is how they can control us, but we must be smarter than them and understand that the only strength we have against their policies, is the collective strength of united discontent.

When will we understand that our politicians are lying to us? Will we ever understand that the mainstream media is not democratic and that the police is there to defend the interests of the wealthy? One can see clearly whose interest the police serves when those who protest and strike have guns pointed at them. Only a few years ago, Argentineans were going to the bank to retrieve their money, and instead of happy clerks, they found hostile policemen telling them to go away. Their money was not theirs anymore, it was gone. Yet, the owners of the banks never lost anything, all their money was out of the country, and once that country had collapsed, they came back again with smiles buying things cheap. I often come cross Argentineans, and frequently they tell me that a global “corralito” is what is about to happen. The sad thing is that I do not need their wisdom to understand that, because I am seeing it with my own eyes. Friends are losing their homes, others are losing their jobs, oil prices are making life hard for those close to me who have to commute everyday, and the hopelessness of the situation is slowly breaking the fabric of the community in which I live.

Because of the internet, I am able to communicate with lots of people around the world, and everything which I see around me, many in other places are seeing around them. So, while bankers and politicians speak of inflation being under control, recession being an illusion, and economic fundamentals being strong, I am led to believe that in their world – wherever that is – they are not exposed to reality. Yet the truth is, that they know the reality much better than I do, they have access to information which I will only see years from now, when hopefully they are punished for their crimes against humanity.

Going back to those truckers whom I saw furious yesterday on the motorway, people must begin to see that they were not obstructing normality, but rather pointing out an abnormality which global citizens must unite to correct. Yesterday, we should have all stopped our cars in support of the truckers, because by supporting the truckers we would be supporting ourselves. We should have demanded that CEOs of oil companies stop receiving multimillion dollar salaries, we should have demanded that our governments implement measures to limit the rising prices of oil, we should have ultimately asked that our governments seize all their hostilities against the oil producing countries, many of those currently in the Middle East.

The last time oil prices skyrocketed was in 1973 when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries OAPEC, announced, as a result of the ongoing Yom Kippur War, that they would no longer ship oil to nations that had supported Israel in its conflict with Syria and Egypt. What a coincidence that oil prices are rising today, as the West is on a rampage against the Arab world, supporting the slaughter of the people in Gaza, supporting the destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, and showing an ever growing hostility towards Iran.

We must begin to pave the path to peace in order to gain global stability, and that must be done by setting measures to stop speculators from benefiting from the misery of others, by punishing corrupt politicians, and by collectively understanding that bankers are rich because we have placed our money in their hands. Ultimately, unless we begin to see the world as a whole, in which things are truly interconnected, our governments will continue their hostilities, oil prices will keep on rising, and when the time comes for us to complain, we will be faced with the guns of the police whom we have helped to create with the payment of our taxes. The only positive thing coming out of this chaos, is that we are no longer able to avoid facing reality, and soon after this social Tsunami which has begun to unravel is over, we will be faced with a true opportunity to collectively construct global order.

--Pablo Ouziel is a sociologist and freelance writer.